In a known process and apparatus of that kind (described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,715,838) a hole is mechanically bored into the lamp socket or cap in order to vent the interior of the gas discharge lamp, the tube body is scratched mechanically adjacent to the caps and then the two scratch lines are heated by a pair of simple gas flame burners so as to crack the glass along each scratch line, by virtue of the heat shock. A procedure of that kind is effective but it is time-consuming.
It is also already known to burn an opening in the discharge casing or tube by means of a simple gas flame in order to vent the discharge tube (DE 34 10 989 A1; JP 52-94674 in: Patents Abstracts of Japan, sect. E 1977; Reimer, Buchard `Recylinganlage und Verfahren zur Vertwertung von quecksilberhaltigen Entladungslampen` (translation: Recycling installation and process for making use of mercury-containing discharge lamps) in: Licht 3-4/1994, pages 296-302). That procedure is time-consuming.
It is also known (DE 38 42 888 A1) for the lamp ends to be heated by an annular burner and then quenched with a cold body in order to remove the lamp ends. That is time-consuming.
Those known cap removal processes are therefore time-consuming to implement, so that the through-put of gas discharge lamps to be disposed of is correspondingly low.